Lily laughed so hard that she started coughing.
Ethan immediately sat forward.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine, nurse Ethan.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“All right, Princess Ethan.”
He groaned.
“Lily!”
She laughed again.
I continued down the hallway, smiling.
For the first time in weeks, he sounded like himself.
But the months were not always easy.
There were mornings when he stood in front of the bathroom mirror, gathering his hair into a ponytail and complaining that it looked ridiculous.
There were afternoons when he came home sweaty from sports and declared that he was going to shave his head the moment the donation was finished.
And there were nights when I found him sitting on his bed, looking at pictures of Lily before her diagnosis.
He never explained what he was thinking.
I never pushed him to tell me.
I believed that giving him the freedom to choose his own way of coping was part of being a good mother.
